A secret shame Inside the latest scandal to rock the Catholic church

7/12/09

When Todd Carpunky was 16, he joined the Legion of Christ. In his six years with the Catholic order, he bore witness to a culture of sexual abuse that rocked the Church. Here, he talks candidly to Peter Stanford about the secretive world created by the order's founder while the papal authorities looked the other way....That trip was the first public sign of the extraordinary bond between Maciel and the man in charge of a church of 1.2 billion souls. In the subsequent 26 years of John Paul's reign, the Legion was regularly lauded by him for its unwavering fidelity to church teaching, its intolerance of dissent, and its conviction that only Catholicism could save the world. Maciel was a prince of the Church, in the papal inner circle, sitting on the most important Vatican committees and running his own congregation of 800 priests and 2,500 seminarians, plus the 70,000 lay members of the associated Regnum Christi movement, as it spread around the globe, including a base in London.

Much has been made of the power wielded by the secretive Opus Dei under John Paul II, not least by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code, but many Vatican-watchers believe that the Legion of Christ was bigger, richer (annual budget £435m), more influential, and even more sinister.

Parents of youngsters recruited as Legionaries described it as a cult that targeted the young and naive in particular, some of them just 13, and then "brainwashed" them. But it is Maciel himself who has proved most controversial. Nuestro Padre was, according to one biographer, "a narcissistic sociopath" with a taste for flights on Concorde and five-star hotels. He is acknowledged by the Legion to have fathered at least one child - a 23-year-old daughter said to be called Norma Hilda and now living in Madrid.

It has also been alleged that he was a paedophile. The first accusation came in 1976 from the former head of the Legion in the US. By 1998, the Vatican had received sworn statements from eight men, all detailing how Maciel had abused them when they were young recruits.

Throughout the 1990s, a series of allegations of sexual abuse of minors by priests that had been covered up by the church authorities shook Catholicism in America, Canada, Australia, Ireland, the UK and other countries. At least two cardinals were forced to retire, dozens of paedophile priests were jailed for their crimes, and the Church paid out millions of pounds in compensation to victims. The damage to its reputation in the eyes of its own congregations has been huge, and bishops have struggled to convince sceptics that they have put into place procedures rigorous enough to ensure that such a betrayal never happens again.

Yet in Maciel's case, it took 30 years - until 2006, after John Paul's death - for the new pope, Benedict XVI, finally to issue a public rebuke, and then it was simply an order that he should see out his days in private prayer rather than face a court. The long delay is evidence, some have suggested, that the Vatican still does not take the issue of paedophile priests sufficiently seriously.

A year after Nuestro Padre's death in 2008, the Vatican announced an investigation into the Legion. An unnamed official told America's National Catholic Reporter newspaper that the total number of Maciel's abuse victims was "more than 20 and less than 100".

As a team of cardinals opens the locked cupboards of an organisation that prided itself on secrecy - all new recruits had to take a unique private vow (abolished by Benedict in 2007) never to speak ill of the founder and to report to superiors anyone who did - the Catholic Church is once more mired in a scandal about the sexual abuse of minors, and the abuse of power....

A catalogue of abuse

Britain Father Michael Hill (pictured) was convicted in 1997 of sexual abuse of nine children. It emerged that his local bishop, the future Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, had been aware that concerns had been raised about Hill's behaviour, but had moved him to another parish.

US Allegations of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests were first made public in 1984. In September 2003, the archdiocese of Boston paid $85m in compensation to 552 victims. Many other dioceses have made similar payments - to an estimated total of $1bn. In 2004 the archdiocese of Portland declared itself bankrupt as a result.

Austria Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër was dismissed as Archbishop of Vienna by Pope John Paul II in 1995 after it emerged that he had abused young boys at Catholic schools over a 40-year period. One expert suggested he may have had 2,000 victims.

Ireland In May 2009, High Court judge Sean Ryan published a report of his nine-year investigation detailing the beating, rape and humiliation of thousands of children by priests and nuns in the schools they ran.

Australia In July 2008 in St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, Pope Benedict XVI made an unprecedented apology for the crimes of priests against minors. "I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured and I assure them that, as their pastor, I too share in their suffering." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/a-secret-shame-inside-the-latest-scandal-to-rock-the-catholic-church-1739889.html